How has drag culture evolved through popular culture and how is it propelled by the use of social media within the USA nowadays? by Paula Ulrika Luksevica Advisor: Michael Krona Examiner: Anders Høg Hansen Grading date: 25-11-2019 Grade: B Main Field: Media and Communications Studies Culture, Collaborative Media and Creative Industries Level: One-year Masters Thesis Malmö University Year: 2019 Abstract Drag culture has become more and more popular throughout the last decade. Performances of drag queens, before, mostly available in secluded bars and clubs, now can be easily found in sold-out venues all around the world. The success of this community can be traced back to the immense success of the television show Ru Paul’s Drag Race (Logo TV, 2009-2016; VH1 ​ ​ 2017-present) and its subsequent impact on the drag performers (also called drag queens) reach through social media platforms, especially Instagram. This paper attempts to point out what was the chain of events that ultimately brought the phenomenon of drag culture to mainstream media and how is it currently narrated to the public. For this research, several research methods were used, such as uses and gratification theory and media framing. A thorough data analysis was conducted, using a data frame, which was applied to a number of news sources within the US. Furthermore, statistics on Instagram following and engagement were taken into consideration as well as compared to individuals of ‘celebrity status’ in order to see how developed the profiles of chosen drag performers are on social media, particularly, Instagram. It was conducted that drag culture on five most read news portals in the USA is generally presented in a positive light, however, has a surprising amount of neutral opinions and lesser amount of negative articles overall. It was also noted that this could be because of the fact that four of these news platforms are politically left leaning and only one is leaning right. In regards of Instagram, it was conducted that the chosen drag representatives and the subsequently chosen individuals of ‘’celebrity status’’ are engaged with in a nearly identical manner, when it comes to the amount of people engaging with the content posted. That further promotes the entrance of drag within the mainstream media and culture. The outcome of this research could, potentially, be useful for further investigation in terms of the popularisation of drag culture and the impact of social media and popular culture on this phenomenon. Information highlighted in yellow has been added after the preliminary seminar on 28.10.19. Keywords: drag culture, drag queen, Instagram, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, content analysis, popular culture, social media, LGBTQ+ 1 Table of contents Abstract 1 Table of contents 2 List of figures and tables 4 1.Introduction 4 1.1. Research area and aim 5 1.2. Research paradigm 5 1.3. Thesis question 6 1.3.1. Sub-questions 6 1.4. Limitations 7 1.4.1. Time constraints 7 1.4.2. Geographical placement 7 1.4.3. Academic sources 7 2. Context 8 2.1. List of relevant definitions 8 2.2. LGBTQ + community 9 2.3. Literature review 10 2.3.1. Evolution of drag culture and its involvement with the LGBTQ+ community 10 2.3.2. Drag culture representation in film and television 11 2.4. Influencer marketing on Instagram 13 2.5. Drag queens 13 2.5.1. Trixie Mattel 14 2.5.2. Bianca del Rio 14 2.5.3. Sasha Velour 14 2.5.4. Violet Chachki 15 2.5.5. Adore Delano 15 3. Theoretical framework 16 3.1. Mediatization and mediation 16 3.2. Uses and gratification theory 16 2 3.2.1. Tension free needs 17 3.2.2. Cognitive needs 17 3.3. Media Framing 18 4. Methodology 19 4.1. Qualitative content analysis 19 4.1.1. Coding 19 4.1.2. Positive / Negative 20 4.1.3. Neutral/Irrelevant 21 4.2. Quantitative content analysis 21 5. Presentation and analysis of results 22 5.1. Leaning left / right 24 5.2. Ru Paul’s Drag Race and mainstream media 24 5.3. Instagram following / engagement 25 5.3.1. Growth of Instagram following pre- and post-Ru Paul’s Drag Race 26 5.3.2. Instagram engagement comparison - celebrities vs. drag representatives 27 6. Ethics 30 7. Concluding discussion / remarks 31 8. References 34 3 List of figures and tables Figure 1: Top 5 News Outlets in the US…………...23 Figure 2: Drag Queen Instagram Following……….27 Figure 3: Instagram Audience Engagement Rate…..28 Figure 4: Celebrity Following on Instagram……….29 Data Frame: Link to Google Sheets………………..34 1.Introduction This research paper is mainly focused on the impact of social media and the way it has worked as a tool to bring awareness to drag culture and it’s representatives. In the authors view, this topic is both interesting and important from MSC perspective, as it presents the relevancy and role of social media platforms in terms of digital activism. Activism on social media or, otherwise called digital or internet activism, has been around for decades. Even though not too prominent during the 80’s, the movement started showing a definite progress with the first arrival of Web 2.0 (Anderson, 2007) and, later on, Facebook in 2004 (Rees, 2015) In regards to social media, platform discussed in this paper is Instagram judging by it’s prominent stand in the media world, as well as the reason of this space being used the most by the drag representatives in question later in this paper. In this thesis, specifically, the focus is put upon the culture of drag and it’s participants, which in most cases are also connected to the LGBTQ+ community. Through drag performances and the culture’s exposure online and on mainstream media (that including television and film), issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, gender discrimination, HIV amongst homosexual individuals etc. can often times reach a much larger audience. Therefore, the author will be discussing the drag ​ cultures exposure on mainstream news outlets, their audience engagement rates on social media, particularly, Instagram, as well as briefly addressing the evolution of drag through video entertainment industry. As an example, one could name arguably one of the most influential television series when it comes to drag culture, over the past decade - Ru Paul’s Drag Race. A number of participants 4 shown on these TV series have further explored their new-found ‘fame’ by speaking out on various relevant topics on their consecutive platforms. The topics may vary from human rights to addressing certain gender-specific norms, lethal diseases, body image and much more.Therefore, by researching this topic, one could pinpoint the ways social media is and can be used to gain wider recognition on topics that may be considered tabu or inappropriate in many parts of the world. From a geographic perspective, this paper is going to be focused on the United States, as the drag culture is the most prominent there in terms of exposure, number of widely known performers and drag culture consumption. This limitation also allows for the research to be much more narrow and precise. 1.1. Research area and aim The author has chosen to research the correlation between drag culture and popular culture (therefore also social media), as it is genuinely interesting, as well as is believed to be a phenomenon that has not been thoroughly academically researched as of now. As the LGBTQ+ community (which also includes the drag culture, at large, as the performers are largely homosexuals or transgender individuals) has expanded greatly over the past decade, it is of great importance, to the view of the author, that the, so-called, sub-cultures of this community are recognised as well. Drag culture has been around for decades, but only recently it has reached the cult-phenomenon status, mostly thanking the push of the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race, the rise of influencer marketing and mediatization and mediation. The aim of this project is to analyse the rise and representation of drag culture within popular culture, mainstream news platforms and social media, towards reaching the status of popular culture. It is believed that drag culture and the LGBTQ+ community at large, has been perceived increasingly well, as opposed to its historical origins. 1.2. Research paradigm When choosing the paradigm this paper could be written through, the author kept the fact, that this particular topic has not been largely covered just yet, in mind. Even though a number of 5 studies on popular culture and social media have already been created, a specific approach on the evolvement of the drag culture through these spaces has not been a research topic that has been widely discussed so far. However, this argument is also mostly based on the author’s experience through gathering of research and analysis dedicated to this paper, therefore, may not be entirely accurate. Regardless, due to the lack of available data in terms of statistics and previous analysis on the topic or topics closely related to the one in question, the author, by using the method of elimination, disregarded the possibility of using the positivist paradigm. The positivist paradigm is largely focused on facts that have already been established and proven, as well as refrains from being emotionally and personally involved in the research (Carson et al., 2001). As the topic discussed is relatively new, the author believes that it is best to look at all the available data, perspectives and ideas, to then narrow down to more specific touch-points later in the research process.